


tempered colors and greys

by usingmyoxygen (keithsforeheadtattoo)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Pet Names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-06
Updated: 2012-12-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:53:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithsforeheadtattoo/pseuds/usingmyoxygen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>arthur enforces some inconvenient form of near-irony: he laughs, for the first time eames has ever witnessed, now that eames has finally given up the pursuit of attempting to enjoy any aspect of his mandatory company.</p><p>arthur's face changes dramatically when he smiles, eames notes with the attention of a man who makes his living knowing faces. he'd even go so far as to admit it's an improvement.</p><p>  <b>written for the i_k meme -- <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/17044.html?thread=34250900">"When Eames calls Arthur "Darling", it's not an expression of desire or playfulness, but of contempt. Eames genuinely dislikes Arthur and his uptightness when they first meet for the Inception Job. But he slowly begins to love Arthur, and the endearment "Darling" becomes true."</a></b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. climbing over rocky mountain

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: this whole fic is written in the same style as the excerpt featured in the summary -- that is to say, sans most capital letters. apologies if that's not your cup of tea, but que sera sera.

"so that's… real?"

william daniel eames looks up and is greeted with the sight of a pair of spidery hands thumbing over a bolded, capital EAMES WILLIAM DANIEL. 

"rather dated picture," he defends, remembering the tragic haircut in the photo almost viscerally. "but, yes, i am old enough to drink, thanks."

he watches the pale face in front of him lift and turn, meeting his gaze. the sentence rolls off the kid's sleekly gelled head like beaded water, completely untouched. eames is wary of any person who, in casual conversation, won't at least try to laugh when a joke is attempted. the effort it would've taken to seem less than hostile is minimal but not put forth in the least by the walking pomade advertisement that hands him back his ID pinched between thumb and forefinger as though it were tainted.

"yeah, i meant the name," arthur drones, puffed with condescension. eames picks a hint of dry midwestern-american affectation from the other man's syllables and somehow uses this to bolster his own mental superiority. 

"well. card's from the military, after all," eames says. "figured i'd give them the right one in case it wound up printed on my death certificate."

he's neither cross nor surprised when this doesn't garner a laugh either, and wonders briefly in retrospect whether he'd've gotten angry if arthur had laughed: the certificate bit (offered in a style he could've claimed as deadpan, had it been well received) was true.

"and you just… use it. eames. as your codename here." arthur's delivery suggests this is not a question.

this, eames realizes, is the longest conversation they've had in the week they've been forced to work in each other's presence, and he's rapidly understanding exactly why that is.

he puts a breadth of emotional chasm between them by plastering on a big smile. 

"oh, my _codename_ , of course," he repeats, and then with a laugh that's more huffy than anything else, adds, "fuck's sake, we're not playing spies, darling."

arthur conducts business, from what eames has observed thus far, somewhat like a bit-part character in a bond film. eames has heard the words "agent" and "mission" used more in the past six days than in perhaps his entire life beforehand.

admittedly, the name topic is one eames has been wondering about as of late. his field of work has never been tame, precisely, but now that dream technology is branching out, wayward, into the hands of the wealthiest bidders, jobs are more high-risk and low-profile than ever. aliases are not only useful but common; he'd just weeks ago worked with some squinty-eyed, tow-headed new hire who after only two months in the business has bestowed himself with an awful moniker that sounds more like a salad than a surname. 

eames basks for multiple minutes in the silence of listening to arthur abashedly pretend to do paperwork. he's smirking by the time he asks, "all that 'agent arthur' bollocks is complete fabrication, then?" and follows it up with an extra "so called after the dudley moore film, i assume?" because he thinks he knows it'll make him angry.

instead, all he receives is an uninterested, "oh. …sullivan." from behind a fortress of manila folder.

eames nearly spits out his coffee. he'd expected rimbaud. or arthur the city, maybe. or arthur the magazine.

"good lord… the H.M.S. bloody pinafore? really?" is the first incredulous thing forth from his mouth before he can think to stop himself. 

arthur enforces some inconvenient form of near-irony: he laughs, for the first time eames has ever witnessed, now that eames has finally given up the pursuit of attempting to enjoy any aspect of his mandatory company.

arthur's face changes dramatically when he smiles, eames notes with the attention of a man who makes his living knowing faces. he'd even go so far as to admit it's an improvement.

"…and the overture di ballo," arthur offers, and maybe it's only the effect of the smile still ghosting across his features, but he seems almost embarrassed. it's a good color on him: closer to humble, at least, than his natural state.

"in any case, arthur sullivan can hardly be held culpable for the libretto work of william gilbert," arthur says flatly after a silence, his own tone quashing his facial expression until it's turned back into a blank, bothersome monolith; puts just enough emphasis on 'william' so as not to be misconstrued. 

any improvement he'd wrought by smiling before dissipates by the close of his sentence.

eames selects a stack of papers at random to invent an urgent purpose for and starts for the door with a single armful.

"for the record, i doubt arthur sullivan ever went through gilbert's wallet, darling," he tosses over his shoulder without turning around.

\- - -

"nose is far more angled. …he's got a fuller beard." eames narrows his eyes, pacing a deliberate half-circle. "…what've you made the eyes brown for, have you even looked at him?" 

"brown?" arthur repeats, some doleful quality flickering into his voice. this is attempt six and he's starting to falter worse with each try. eames wants, for the sake of the job and its future, to be frustrated, but can't help the ensuing schadenfreude. 

"god damn it, i didn't mean to make them--" arthur mutters, looking away, cracking his knuckles in a kneading motion that becomes increasingly frantic.

"just focus," eames encourages, accompanying himself with an effortless demonstration: he blinks through hazel, at first, and green, and then, for added passive insult, the same gloomy sapphire he and arthur have been studying in photographs for the past eight days. it isn't a helpful show, he suspects, but certainly doesn't mind watching a trace of jealousy pass through arthur's disguised features.

"how do you…" he ekes out in almost a whisper, trailing off in frustration.

"he's the mark's husband, darling, and the difference between blue eyes and brown ones could mean the very swift end to everything you've been working on." eames keeps his tone lethally patient; can almost physically feel his own irises recede into their natural state.

"i'm done," arthur proclaims, running his palms across his face, exasperated. eames obliges him for the first time all day and signals the kick.

"oh," he notes in genuine surprise when arthur looks up -- pretends it's in response to the oncoming collapse and not the deep navy-colored gaze that meets his just before they both resurface in a pair of mismatched chairs in an office building, trailing PASIV lines.

\- - -

gritting his teeth against the umpteenth trumpeting lilt of _moonlight serenade_ was not the new year's celebration eames planned for himself. the job was supposed to have been completely open-and-shut as of a week ago, in fact, but they'd been held up by none other than king arthur himself, still floundering so hopelessly that their head extractor, grady, had afforded him extra time out of fear he'd ruin the whole thing otherwise.

eames had flight tickets booked and everything. he'd meant to go home, for the first time in years. he would be on another continent right now, awake, if it weren't for arthur, he broods, frowning into a compact mirror and gingerly adjusting a smeary lipstick edge with one manicured finger.

"is that really necessary?" berates a voice that sounds too familiar to be reassuring.

"if you're lugging those god-awful chicago vowels around by the time the mark talks to you, we're finished," eames shoots in an accurately southern-tinted, smoky mezzo. "…and yes, it's entirely necessary. a girl's got to look her best," he adds hastily as three projections in a row eye arthur suspiciously while passing.

"…i don't have to talk to her _much_ ," arthur says, and sort of mutters it; he's fumblingly correcting his speech, sheepishly adapting, clipping sounds.

eames sips bitterly at something strong and icy in a highball. he shouldn't have to give correction on the job to anyone, let alone the man essentially responsible for canceling his holiday. 

"if that's the explanation you'd like to give grady after this whole thing crashes and burns at her personal expense," he blinks profusely, adjusting an auburn marcel wave, "be my guest, darlin'."

\- - -

the job goes off. not without a hitch, because it is, if nothing else, riddled with hitches, but evidently free of fatal ones. they get the information they need, which means they'll get paid, which means they'll get to fucking _leave_ and it's suddenly the best concept eames has ever been on the cusp of.

grady calls them for one final meeting at the job's close where she hands out their shares, one by one, in thick yellow envelopes. arthur gives eames an absolutely poisonous look when their gazes accidentally touch from across the room. eames can only offer his shiniest shit-eating grin.


	2. when a felon's not engaged in his employment

"he's very good," insists the man who insists that he be called cobb for all work-related purposes, a title that eames accommodates only because he hadn't bothered to learn his real one in the first place. he's still not in particular favor of using false names semi-permanently but hasn't brought it up much to anyone; something about having qualms regarding blurring the lines of identity seems hypocritical for a man of his chosen profession.

"at what, exactly?" eames asks, and has to hand it to cobb for the sake of the man's sheer audacity when he replies with simply "…tactics."

"christ, did you two sleep together or something?"

cobb, who is vastly easier to get along with (if a little pretentious), is obliging enough to laugh before elaborating that arthur is "good in terms of analyzation and assessment" and a lot of other long-winded ways to phrase a total lack of skill or background.

"give him plenty of photos," is eames' only advice, and he watches carefully as cobb stirs in response.

"i, uh… wasn't thinking of taking him on as a forger, actually."

"…please don't tell me you expect him to extract?" eames says, leaning over the table slightly.

"not quite what i'd had in mind, no," cobb replies. "…pointmanship." he says, even more bafflingly.

"please," eames uses the word for a second time in a single conversation, perhaps a personal record; "for your own sake, don't let whatever made-up position that is be one of any power."

cobb smiles. "it's organizational, mostly."

eames reflects impulsively on the always-sorted quality of arthur's desk; his even, sloping handwriting. and as disastrous as his attempts to replicate it through forgery had been, the man certainly had an infuriatingly accurate memory for detail.

the last job they'd worked together was at least a year back, if not longer, eames reminds himself. maybe in the time since, arthur had managed to separate his head at least partway from his arse.

"well, i say keep him as long as you wish, provided you won't return him." eames says, vaguely disappointed: cobb had seemed, at first, like a veritable business prospect. unfortunate, he empathizes briefly, that a man with promise like that would voluntarily get himself contractually bound to someone with cripplingly little imagination.


	3. when the foeman bares his steel

eames boards a flight to the states from heathrow without a return ticket. he's gone months without work and the magnetic yearning for it starts before they even hit tarmac. vacations are no longer within his grasp, this last attempt seems to have proven. he's given up the wait for a day when he won't still be at watch for miragelike enemies on every corner and resolves instead to dive back into a world that lets him execute them.

he turns down four offers and considers the fifth only because he's heard it's never yet been successfully done. he needs, more than anything, something to bury his mind in for a good, long while, and the wildly improbable seems like an appropriate enough distraction.

their primary extractor, rodriguez, is a woman he's worked with before, efficient and results-oriented if stern to a fault. eames doesn't even think to do anything but trust her judgment completely until he walks in on day one of the assignment and surveys the team she's selected.

his heart hammers, inexplicably but undeniably, at the sight of a dark, slicked-back crop of hair attached to a head that deliberately doesn't turn when eames enters.

"lovely to see you, too, darling," he spouts, saccharine, in the dawning understanding that this job will be significantly worse than impossible.

\- - -

rodriguez isn't the owner of a face one would reasonably risk laughing in, so it takes a lot of restraint on eames' part when he hears from the extractor herself that arthur's been hired on as point man.

it's caught on as an actual title in the business, apparently, spearheaded primarily by some contemporary rodriguez has told him about, one wunderkind amalie miles. eames marvels, a little -- he'd been less than surprised to find cobb in search of someone to run about after him, cleaning up his messes, whereas rodriguez seemed hardly in need of any pointing.

he begrudgingly obliges her decision, spends months of work in silent and angry puzzlement, and eats every word of his own disapproving inner monologue when they execute their first run of the architecture and arthur evades six different instances of potential dream collapse singlehandedly.

\- - -

two weeks after the job's close, eames wakes up to a slew of vague and frantic voicemails from rodriguez clogging his inbox. his heart contracts violently before he's even through listening to them all, head swimming from sleep and the foreign sound of fear in her imperturbable voice.

he calls her back and gives up after three attempts that don't go through. the stucco pattern of hotel wall burns his corneas as he replays the same message repeatedly.

there had been a chance, she'd told him before he ever signed on for the job, an immense one, that the idea simply wouldn't take. he'd agreed in the knowledge of it all -- of exactly what brand of an enemy they were making if the mark figured them out.

eames picks up a call from the job's architect on the first ring and it's everything he'd known when rodriguez didn't answer.

he packs a single suitcase and is about to dispose of the burner he'd picked up for the job when he scrolls through its contacts a final time.

"it didn't take," he breathes into arthur's answering machine. he doesn't remember even placing the call, but he's talking now, his words a lightning-paced rhythm under the roar of blood rushing through his temples. "rodriguez is gone, she was in the country when they caught up with her and if you are too you shouldn't be."

he's sitting in a terminal about to board when he gets a call on the disposable flip-phone: he'd held onto it until the last possible second, his final link to the team.

"thank you," says the voice on the other line before eames can open his mouth to speak. a silence lingers in the wireless connection and he's about to hang up before the voice informs him shakily, "it's just us. …left."

"you've migrated?" eames confirms curtly, and there's something about the "yeah" he gets in return that pierces his heart a little. stripped of authority and pretense, arthur sounds almost like a child. 

"give it months at least," he orders. "they're thorough."

eames gets rid of the phone before he embarks and spends his first hours on solid ground in mombasa wishing foolishly that maybe he'd kept it.


	4. in enterprise of martial kind

eames has taken care to never be recognized in kenya, but then he's taken care, too, as a general rule of thumb, to never turn down drinks he's not expected to pay for. when cobb eventually finds him, he manages to balance the former's offense with the latter.

"inception," he says, when eames requests in no uncertain terms that he cut the crap. something in his tone reeks of the fact that he thinks he's springing this on eames, but the second he'd seen cobb's face and held his totem at the same time he knew what cobb wanted. he knows he's a good forger, sure, but not the kind you'd risk your life being tailed through africa for -- apart from his background as the second survivor of the closest inception attempt on record.

"now, before you bother telling me it's impossible--" cobb tries to begin, already an awful birthday party magician, but eames won't let him.

it's far from impossible, he knows, innate and instantaneous.

"it's perfectly possible," he says as though he's thinking it through. "it's just bloody difficult."

the noise he ejects at a mention of arthur's name is all at once pondering, amused, and strangled. pondering because _is arthur still working with cobb?_ and amused because _agents_ and _codenames_ and _he's only tried once and he thinks it's impossible_ and strangled, partly because _he could've died_ but mostly because _you might've saved him._

"arthur," he drawls, recovering -- asks "you still working with that stick in the mud?" but doesn't really listen for the answer because he's sure of it already.

by the time he crosses into australia he's doing so on a whole new stack of identification, his picture and birth year the only actual facts printed on any of its items. all airport security attendants aside, he lets arthur have the first look at it on day one at the warehouse, not out of respect but some strange sense of tradition.

"terrible," is all arthur says, pointing once at the new false name, but he laughs while he says it, so the gesture seems worthwhile.

\- - -

"so, fischer's mother's out," arthur announces.

eames is frustrated, and exhausted, and relieved, and indignant, but not surprised. he exhales, trying fruitlessly to cleanse himself of the feeling of ballooning.

"been telling cobb to do as much for days now… let me guess, darling, you brought it up once and now it's set in stone?"

arthur doesn't directly answer, which is the clearest reluctant 'yes' eames has come to expect from him. 

"i mean, he was pretty young when she died," he explains as though it were a detail eames could've somehow missed in the fischer file. "the idea might not go through all the way."

his words come out a little raw. eames hadn't exactly meant to talk to him about the last time they'd worked together but realizes, nonetheless, only now that they haven't ever talked about it.

not that he's in need of someone to talk to. he's never been. he has nightmares every night regardless of whether or not rodriguez's face or voice appear in them.

he lets the team call him eames, still -- but just this one, and just in contained situations. he still travels without a phone and he's still afraid of every piece of mail that manages to follow him.

"have you… taken a lunch break yet?" arthur addresses the vein bulging out along eames's temple. "do you want to, uh, go w--…?" he hangs a limp second sentence out to dry (of which eames silently, darkly predicts the end.)

"if you're trying to pick me up, darling, it is anything but working," he banishes arthur, going so far as to remonstratively flap a folder in the man's direction.

extinguished, arthur furrows his brow.

"god, do you fucking think in quips?" he scoffs, and eames laughs to fill the ragged hole he knows has just been punched through a primary wall of his emotional defense system.

\- - -

since last they'd been around each other, arthur's ego seems to have swelled into a virtual list of demands -- explanations, specificity, simplicity, regulation. 

eames is tired, deeply tired, hasn't done anything but work for weeks even while he's sleeping, hasn't known anything but somnacin chugging through his blood vessels since what feels like the beginning of time.

ariadne asks what a kick is and he can't even stand the thought of another of arthur's brisk, expository soliloquies. eames kicks his chair out from under him, knowing that the jeans-wearing rookie arthur he first met in nuremberg years ago would've regarded it like treason.

arthur merely flails, rights himself, and an hour later when they're both studying the same small-scale model, kicks the heel of eames's shoe, placid and smiling.

\- - -

the party held for arthur's five-year anniversary on the job falls on the single week they've been allotted to themselves, and so eames resolves immediately not to go. he shows up, the night of, twenty minutes late, in a miasma of aftershave and empty-handed. they have, over the years, become friends, in some nebulous and sandpapery way; they have not, eames decided that morning after a shuffle through his monthly bills, become friendly enough that arthur's fleeting happiness is worth any of his money.

he wouldn't have known what to get him, anyway, eames thinks in order to console himself when his third drink and umpteenth look at the myriad of thoughtful things bought for arthur's sake start to ingrain hints of guilt in him.

arthur, in any case, doesn't seem to mind. he seems surprised that eames is there at all; thanks him for coming, as though he were some uncle who lives far off and flew out for the occasion. 

"of course, any time," eames waves the gratitude off immediately and uncomfortably. arthur's eyes are already far away, looking through eames and scanning the crowd on the other side.

a roving waitress sidles past, offering watery beer from a tray. "oh," eames says, and watches arthur in periphery as he delivers a "no thanks, darling".

it is too calculated of a move, he thinks at first in diluted regret, but sure enough, by the time he utters 'darling' arthur snaps into immediate attention, neck angling towards him in reply.

eames draws out a wry, balanced smile; says "what, thought that name was reserved just for you?" and repeats the primary action that constitutes their relationship: he relishes, quietly, in the triumph of flapping the unflappable.

arthur tosses his arms, a harried and chagrined incarnation of a shrug, and opens his mouth to speak -- before he can respond he's drawn into some new toast in his honor by some new drunken case interning in some new method of extraction and within minutes he's disappeared back into a bordering crowd. 

eames spends the rest of the night drowning in dark pints. he's not even sure why he's angry except that being around whole hordes of twentysomethings always makes his skin crawl. 

he waits until the bar empties to leave, somehow figuring this as better than taking a cab. he watches a lanky, familiar form move to a coat rack and then envelop itself in a scarf and jacket. his eyes focus involuntarily. arthur is smiling, talking animatedly, gesticulating with first one hand and then the other as they disappear one by one into a pair of sleeves. eames doesn't notice himself smiling in response behind the hand his face is resting on until the door shuts in arthur's wake and he feels a worse-than-neutral expression settle back over his features.

\- - -

"that boy's relationship with his father is even worse than we imagined," eames reports -- or attempts to, before a terse "this helps us how?" steps on the end of his sentence.

he nods wordlessly over the conversational aid cobb tries to provide, truly hearing none of it: he is focused on the glint of leather beelining back for him.

"how are you going to reconcile them if they're so estranged?" says the self-appointed sentinel, not looking for an answer.

eames understates his fury anyway in the direction of arthur's retreating back: grunts a cursory "well, i'm working on that, aren't i?"

the resulting sight of the other man taking and drastically missing a series of repeated pot shots at a sniper that is essentially pretend is surprisingly gratifying. eames lets it happen at first, leaning against the side of the van with his arms folded and taking it all in, before he takes action.

'afraid' is a carefully selected word. 'dream' is the natural choice, and 'bigger' seems the most efficient. the weapon, make and model, he's settled on before he even comes to a halt at arthur's side.

'darling', on the other hand, comes out almost accidentally yet somehow proves to be the bitterest two syllables he's uttered all day. 

\- - -

nestled deeply somewhere in fischer's cerebral cortex, eames lets his muscles relax for the first time. he's finished with forging and ready for snow. he's always held a contempt for hotels that feels only heightened now that he's being pursued in an imaginary one. 

"security's gonna run you down hard," he warns while arthur's fingertips dart under his shirt cuff and run along his wrist, finally hitting vein. he's been taking direction all day and it feels good, primally good, to go limp on the floor and tell somebody else how to do their job.

"and i will lead them on a merry chase," says arthur who fumbles slightly as he plugs the line in under eames's skin, arthur who will be in charge of his body and his life as soon as he goes under, arthur whose voice could've been the last one eames ever heard if they'd caught up to him before mombasa or if fischer catches on now or if the compound doesn't work and they can't go deep enough, arthur who likes musicals and vile fast food and sig sauers --

eames laughs when he's frightened, so he laughs now, and advises that arthur be back before the kick just to ruffle his feathers because he trusts implicitly that he will be.


	5. if we're weak enough to tarry

they'd all agreed not to cluster too badly, even devising an ordered system beforehand in which eames was more than happy to draw the shortest proverbial straw: sitting at baggage claim, watching the metal carousel until it empties.

he starts so violently at the feel of a hand on his shoulder that he has to smile and wave at the woman in front of him before she'll turn back around and resume minding her business.

"hey," arthur says in a tone that means 'what's wrong with you?'

even saying 'fischer' feels risky. truly delving into root causes would be riskier. eames doesn't talk about the army. eames doesn't talk about anything heavier than hydrogen.

"doing all right?" he asks.

arthur answers about the team, informing him they've already cleared the first three.

"are you doing all right?" eames asks, trying again.

"…you never let me take you out for that lunch, y'know," arthur shuffles -- trying again, too.

there's a radiant hope in arthur's eyes, lit-up, neon, open for business: he already thinks he knows the fischer job worked. eames knows from having spent quite a while in his own company that doing so for a lunch's-worth of time can put all that out abruptly.

"it's six at night," he retaliates.

"and it's wednesday," arthur says arbitrarily as though both facts are inconsequential.

eames groans under the weight of the time zone shift. he's never been fond of the ones so gaping they leave you in another day entirely. he could use a coffee. toast, maybe. something with potatoes. something starchy enough to hold him together.

"we're absolutely not leaving here at the same time." he murmurs, dauntingly final.

arthur spends an inordinate while rolling up his sleeves. "i have two hours before my connecting flight and i intend to spend them both right there," he proclaims, indicating an unoccupied two-top at the head of the nearest airport diner. 

eames fights a smirk.

"mark was one of the first ones out," arthur adds persuasively, meaning fischer. eames wonders briefly if he's included in the reasons why arthur's not addressing the mark by name. "and our tourist, too. so now we've just got one in the lobby, one waiting at terminal to board… one probably running home to the kids as we speak…"

there are still two suitcases circling; they wait together in silence until the bags are each matched to owners.

"what's the worst that could happen?" arthur says finally, almost a whisper. eames is shocked at the desperation he hears but more so at the lack of professionalism. or maybe at the cliché.

he holds up his hands in defeat and agrees to dinner as long as he doesn't have to honestly answer arthur's question.


	6. when darkly looms the day

"how are you, darling?"

"what?" he laughs and says at first because it's been years since the last time eames called him that. "what?" he says again in dawning seriousness because they'd had sex for the first time that weekend and suddenly the pet name weighs about fifty pounds more.

"…the city's treating you well enough?" crackles through the other end of the receiver uncertainly.

"yeah, i'm holding up," arthur says in the knowledge he is doing anything but. he's been sent to new york for an astronomically important client, but more nerve-wracking than that is the fact that he's been sent alone.

he's never done a job alone before. he's never spent the night alone for more than a week at a time before, either, he'd just realized that morning, though that fell further to the bottom of the mammoth list of fears he'd truly forgotten to account for until now that he's on the phone lying about them all to the only person he could conceivably tell the truth.

"good," says eames, "you'd better be. and if not, i think i know a certain massive corporation who'll have your head about it."

never before has a joke made arthur want to melt into the fucking pavement more than this one does now.

"are you gonna be around when i get back?" he blurts out. he wants to think it's just a tit-for-tat way to make eames uncomfortable, but if nothing else, arthur has learned in this business that simply wanting something does not make it so.

"why's that? deciding whether or not to make it back here in one piece?"

arthur stares out the plate glass of the hotel window.  
 _yes_ , he thinks with a pressing dread.  
 _no_ , he corrects himself, with a worse one. _that part's not my decision._

"something like that," he says, venting a single breath into the mouthpiece.

when eames speaks again it's in a tone arthur has heard before, but only in absolute privacy. gentle, he might call it, were it from anyone but eames.

"…well. i could be, darling," he says, and says it like it's the one real thing arthur could control if he wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> the work title's from "oh my darling darling" by peter s. quinn - and yes, the chapter titles are indeed all gilbert & sullivan... (;


End file.
